Freedom to Marry Week 2010

I just learned that it's Freedom to Marry week. The Freedom to Marry organization is Evan Wolfson's brainchild. Wolfson wrote Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. (Guess what that's about? Go on, guess!) I admit that I never got all the way through Wolfson's book, because Wendy Brown's States of Injury had an influence on me in graduate school. If I remember correctly (and my memory is always in question, plus I may not have finished that book either... I prefer a scattershot reading practice), Brown asks us to consider whether appealing to the state is the best way to change things--whether appealing for equal rights will truly effect equality? She criticizes the liberal emphasis on granting rights through laws: when rights are granted, the state is empowered to protect rights and citizens are disempowered through a greater dependency on the state. Wolfson and his organization approach the same-sex marriage issue from the "equal rights" perspective, arguing that the way marriage is currently legislated, it excludes "gays" from full citizenship. (For the record, I take umbrage with Wolfson's insistent use of the term "gay." Same-sex is both alliterative and less exclusive sounding.) Like Brown, and unlike Wolfson, then, I'm not so sure arguing in favor of granting same-sex couples equal rights in marriage is going to make the institution any more just or accessible.

I am sympathetic to Wolfson et al.'s work toward achieving the "right to marry," but I am concerned about those individuals who do not or cannot marry (this is not a question of choosing not to marry--if one believes as I do that individual choice is so already circumscribed as to have a mythic quality). Marriage remains a privileged status: when someone says "my husband" or "my wife," that someone receives different treatment, typically more respect, than if someone admits to being unmarried or divorced. That privilege--as much economic as social--is enshrined in law. Marriage law creates a caste system. I'm currently of pariah status (if anyone was wondering).

I have been reading and re-reading (OK, memorizing) Mary Shanley's Just Marriage, a thrilling example of how difficult dialogues transform people. I'm not sure why Shanley gets the main byline; the book is co-authored by some of the coolest minds re-imagining (or dismantling) marriage today: Nancy Cott, Amitai Etzioni, Martha Fineman, Wendy Brown, Drucilla Cornell, and I could go on. Shanley starts off with an essay in which she argues that civil marriage should be re-fashioned to be a more just and accessible institution. Marriage, she claims, should be retained because it has civic value. Marriage is a "special bond deserving of public status"; a married couple is "something more than its separate members" (6). She initially rejects the contractualist position (which favors abolishing marriage as a legal status in favor of an alternative like civil unions-for-all, or state-sanctioned care-giver relationships--c.f. Martha Fineman's position in The Autonomy Myth). Shanley writes:

Despite [its] dismal history, the notion that marriage creates an entity that is not reducible to the individual spouses captures a truth about significant human relationships and could be used to reshape social and economic institutions in desirable ways. This understanding of the marriage relationship could be used in the future not to subordinate women but to press for marriage partners' rights to social and economic supports that sustain family relationships and enable spouses to provide care for one another...
Marriage as a status suggests, as the contract model does not, the role of committed relationships in shaping the self. The promise to love someone else, in a marriage or in a friendship or in a community, binds a person to act in ways that will fulfill that obligation. A contract also does not express the notion of unconditional commitment, either to the other person or to the relationship. Contract in lieu of marriage rests upon a notion of quid pro quo, in which each party offers something and agrees on the terms of an exchange as a rational bargainer. But the marriage commitment is unpredictable and open ended, and the obligations it gives rise to cannot be fully stated in advance. What love attuned to the well-being of another may require is by its nature unpredictable. (27-28)

What makes this little book thrilling is that fourteen folks contribute their critical response to Shanley's position. At the end one finds a short and heartening rejoinder by Shanley, in which she states that she has changed her thinking on the matter: civil unions win! You'll have to read the book to find out why. Go on, let yourself be transformed.

What Good is Mirage?

England experienced what I’ve referred to as a “crisis of marriage” starting around the mid-eighteenth century with Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, which was supposed to eliminate marital indeterminacy. That is, the 1753 legislation was supposed to help folks determine whether a marriage was legal and above-board. Given the vast range of marriage customs (broomstick wedding, anyone?) and conflicting laws (between Church and State, between England and Scotland, etc.) people weren't always certain if they were married or not. As it happened, the so-called 1753 Law of Clandestine Marriage was not that difficult to get around, as anecdotes, court cases, and novels subsequently proved. And instead of making marriage intelligible to its practitioners, the law only placed another in a series of mystifying veils over the institution, which grew more and more confused and vexing to its practitioners in the British Isles and throughout the British Empire over the next 150 years. Marriage was particularly susceptible to reforms in the Victorian Era, the “age of progress,” and these reforms were frequently described, demanded, and denounced in Victorian novels, poems, and stories.

We’re hearing echoes of the Victorian crisis of marriage in America today. We’re no longer certain what the point of the institution is, according to Robin West, a legal scholar whose work has been important in the Law and Literature movement as well. West writes that the question haunting us (U.S.) today is something like “What good is marriage?”

We—meaning all of us—need to contemplate this question, not only because it is an interesting one, but also because lawmakers will likely take steps over the next half century to change the legal contours of marriage. We need to raise the question regarding the good of marriage not only to deepen understanding. If we can go some ways toward answering the question, it will help guide deliberation on whether, and if, and how, we change it (Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender, 2007, p. 21).

She’s writing from the perspective of Law, and I’m frankly not sure who her audience is here. The book is a thorough description of three different stances folks take on marriage today: defending it, arguing to abolish it, and arguing to fix or redefine it. West herself takes the modest, moderate position that civil union law should be expanded as a socially legitimate alternative to marriage. But I digress: my goal here is not to review her important book, so much as to wonder aloud whether anyone is now writing fiction that criticizes today’s marriage laws? Are there novels that represent same-sex marriages? Are there stories that promote or criticize alternatives to marriage? Are American authors even interested in marriage anymore? It seems to me that the big names in twentieth-century U.S. fiction, Updike et al., were all-too preoccupied with adultery. Have they moved on to engage other issues around marriage, especially as the institution comes under increased strain?

Interview as Big as the Ritz

This is the Ritz-Carleton Hotel in Philadelphia, the site of one of my MLA interviews. There were six interviewers, including the chair of the department and an interested graduate student. There was one interviewee triumphantly wearing her MLA suit, thanks to the MLA air diet.

Here's a sampling of the best interview advice I received this year:

1. Don't forget to sparkle.
2. Don't forget to breathe.
3. Talk about how your dream course serves the students, not yourself.
4. Go into more detail about what happens in your classroom.
5. Be yourself.*

*Last night at an informal UW MLA-attendee gathering, my own dept. chair was laughing red wine out of his nose at something I'd said, and spluttered, "Did you show your sardonic humor in your interviews?" When I assured him I had refrained, he replied, "That's probably a good thing." So perhaps as well-intended as "be yourself" can be, as advice from one's beloved goes, it may not be the savviest advice to follow.

This advice all came to me from good friends, and I'm grateful to each of them for patiently listening to me while I relentlessly practiced answering fake interview questions, even at times when they hadn't actually asked me any fake interview questions. Thanks to these kind friends, my interviews went very well.

And now for something completely different... overheard at the MLA:

"... do call me. I love giving presidential addresses--so many people come to them..."
--Gayatri Spivak

"As [so and so] says in a very fine essay entitled 'Pointy Penises'..."
--Joseph Bristow

"Really, it should be fine to look puffy all the time."
--Paige Morgan

MLA Suit Fugue

Both definitions of fugue were in full force on Christmas night as I was packing suit variations for the Modern Language Association's annual post-Christmas convention in Philadelphia. The trick is to figure out how to stretch one's limited supply of professional clothing as long as possible--crucial if one plans to wander around the streets and hotels of downtown Philly for more than two days.

When I was packing my bed looked like this:

My boyfriend patiently looked on as I talked him through the Sunday outfit, the Monday (interview1) outfit, the Tuesday (interview2) outfit, and the Wednesday (just-in-case) outfit, and then he quietly waited for me to finish packing and re-packing my suitcase, wisely offering no helpful suggestions when I realized that my favorite gray Clarks heels would not make it to the convention after all.

After a 5.5 hour flight, I arrived at the downtown Doubletree hotel. A noisy demotion from Nob Hill's Fairmont where I stayed for the MLA convention in San Francisco last year. I unpacked, and my fugue state shifted from variations on a theme ...



to being more of a really disturbed state of consciousness, as I realized that I would need to re-read my entire dissertation (completed in 2007) in order to remember what it was about. Sweet dreams indeed.

Grandma's Favorite Cookies Not Tonight

These are my grandmother's favorite Christmas cookies. A basic butter cookie with an orange-honey glaze, the dough is very pleasing to put together because of the scent that lingers on your fingers from the fresh orange juice and grated orange peel. They are then dressed with a honey-orange glaze and topped with chopped walnuts. I cannot reproduce the recipe here, because it's a family secret. Got it? No recipe. Thus this entire post is a teaser.

And I'll tell you why that's fair: every year at Christmas-time, the Modern Language Association holds its annual job-hunt/meat-market/fish-bowl convention. Folks hoping to obtain a job teaching in the Humanities in an institution of higher education, many of whom are under-employed as adjunct faculty or office drones or baristas, are required to spend upwards of $1,000 traveling to this convention in order to give interviews, if they are fortunate to have them.


But if one were, hypothetically, following my family's recipe for these scrumptious cookies, one might consider pulsing the butter and flour together in a food processor, but not too long because it should be light and fluffy.




This year's MLA is in Philadelphia, the week after Christmas. Three years ago when I commenced my tenure-track professorship quest, after an agonizing eight hours in a shopping mall, I spent over $200 on the most charming black and grey tweed Calvin Klein suit (with a slightly flared skirt) to wear to my interviews. Since last MLA (in San Francisco) I managed to gain enough weight to not fit into the Interview Suit. This has provoked a crisis in our community.

In fact, these cookies can hardly be thought of as innocent in my, um, augmentation.

However, if one were to persevere and figure out the recipe, one might like to know that one must refrigerate the dough for at least an hour before rolling it out.

There will be NO dough in my fridge this year, as I am now desperately following the MLA diet. Yes, dear reader, this means that I have been granted two interviews. And in lieu of purchasing a larger suit for the slim chance of a campus visit, I will lose the ten pounds preventing me from wearing Calvin without busting the seams.

But if one had chilled the dough, one would eventually like to roll it out about 1/8" thick, select several cookie cutters, solicit some assistance, and cut out shapes to bake. See the charmingly plump dough-children? I will not resemble them two weeks from now, in Philadelphia.


After baking them one glazes them. One might be deserted by one's helpers at this point, because picking cookie cutters is fun, while painting cookies with glaze is tedious and sticky. But all under-bakers and assistants swiftly return to sample these treats. Except those attending the MLA, who are neither baking this year, nor sampling. No, we are a committed lot: we are eating air, and we will get a job!

Wuthering WTF

Um... WHAT is happening here?
I innocently enter one of those Hudson Booksellers shops in the airport (um, Fresno? Sacramento? LAX? can't remember--there have been many airports in the past two months), and am confronted with this confusing display. Is that... my favorite novel? All sexed up like so? Right next to that monumental work of genius Big Girls Don't Cry? Alphabetization is definitely working it here. But I don't think that's the source of my confusion. Let's get a closer look.

It's kind of gothic-pretty. I think I like it. But why is Cathy dressed like a gypsy shrew? What's up with the flapper beads and the wild straight-from-the-moors hairdo?


And what's up with Heathcliff sporting the rebel-without-a-cause rockabilly-in-a-vampire-cape look? I'm so confused. This is what happens with Penguin makes a formidable marketing decision like "let's sex up that oldie-but-goodie that no one really reads anymore by having a famous fashion illustrator redo the cover."

Here's the bookflap's justification: "This book is part of a series of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions designed with original cover art in watercolor, pencil, or ink by world-renowned fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. blah blah name dropping blah... Toledo and his designer wife, Isabel Toledo, whose dress and coat were selected by Michelle Obama to wear at the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, are the subject of a book and a museum exhibition entitled 'Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion.' blah blah... Ruben Toledo's book design for Penguin Classics represents the marriage of art and fashion to literature. His couture-inspired interpretations of these beloved classic characters and novels contribute a uniquely creative vision to the long history of excellence in book design at Penguin."

So just because Toledo's wife designed the coat Michelle Obama wore at her husband's inauguration, we're supposed to buy this new edition of Wuthering Heights? Since when does political celebrity name-dropping/the fashion industry yield a new interest in a Victorian novel? Do Toledo's illustrations update the story? Will Penguin's fashionista-piquing gamble work in an era of recessionista self-denial? Do fashionistas even read? (Shameless plug: check back in December for my MLA gofugyourself posts) This writer did not succumb, but then LOOK WHAT SHE'S WEARING!


**UPDATE (May 30, 2010)**
This just found, via The Floating Academy: an article from the Guardian about another new cover for Wuthering Heights and the "Twilight Effect."

The Great C19 Books-to-Film blog post

I keep forgetting to call my reader's attention to this other blog post that I actually got paid to do. Check out my list of cinematic adaptations of nineteenth-century stories for Amazon.com.

(here I am at Yale in November 2008 with David Francis' rare, working triunial magic lantern... that's how the Victorians experienced "moving pictures"...)